Press/Social Media Release

Rainforest Action Network greenwashes destruction of half of Ontario, Canada's boreal forests; despite lack of any detail regarding vague promised protections, and without scientific findings that doing so is ecologically sufficient

By Earth's Newsdesk, a project of Ecological Internet
Dr. Glen Barry, +1 (920) 776-1075

(Earth) -- Rainforest Action Network (RAN) of San Francisco has long been one of America's leading rainforest campaign organizations. Yet in July their campaign to protect Ontario, Canada's boreal forests [search] doomed half this vital global ecological system to industrial destruction. In return, RAN and other proponents received vague promises of protections over a decade from now, but no protected area boundaries or protection plans.

Canada's boreal forests are home to hundreds of sensitive species of animals including polar bears, caribou and wolverines. Boreal forests are some of the world's largest carbon storehouses, with holdings equal to decades of global emissions from fossil fuels, while continually absorbing new emissions. The boreal region is also the world's largest reservoir of clean fresh water.

Continue reading "RELEASE: RAN Sells-Out Canadian Boreal Forests" »

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Findings that oxygen-starved ocean "dead zones" have doubled every decade [ark | more\ark] since the 1960s, killing massive amounts of marine life at the base of the food chain, demonstrate just how sick the Earth has become. The new study in the journal Science found there are now some 400 ocean areas that are devoid of life with new ones popping up continuously. Ocean dead zones [search] most often result from nutrient rich river run-off -- particularly containing nitrogen from fertilizers and pesticides associated with industrial agriculture -- which cause algae blooms and low oxygen levels unable to support life. Climate change frequently exacerbates the condition.

Chaos in the planet's nitrogen cycle [search] is second perhaps only to climate change in threatening the biosphere's life support systems. The Earth's ability to provide habitat for humans and all life forms is deteriorating, as economic activities have overshot the carrying capacity of ecosystems. Dead zones show human activities can destroy all life in given area, and given continuation of current trends, the possibility of this occurring globally cannot be dismissed.

Continue reading "Ocean Dead Zones, Chaotic Nitrogen Cycling and the Earth's Survival" »

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PRESS RELEASE

By Ecological Internet, http://www.ecologicalinternet.org/

(The Earth) -- Ecological Internet, the world's leading provider of environmental portals including http://www.ClimateArk.org/ and http://Forests.org/, will soon launch a new Internet e-zine entitled "New Earth Rising". The publication will be committed to biocentric thought, and promote sufficient ecological sustainability solutions to pressing global ecological crises. Today they announce they are accepting submissions for publication.

New Earth Rising will build upon years of ecological sustainability writings and actions on the web by Ecological Internet. In 1995 they introduced the world's first and longest continually running blog, and their President, Dr. Glen Barry, was the writer of the critically acclaimed and recently concluded "Earth Meanders" series of personal essays.

Continue reading "New Earth Rising: Call for Submissions of Original Green Writing " »

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A new report from WWF-UK warns exploitation of North America’s tar sands [search] and oil shale [search] could increase atmospheric CO2 levels by up to 15%. They release as much as eight times as much carbon as petroleum. Over-reaction to gasoline prices [search] going up a couple bucks in the rich world may lead to the catastrophic embrace of these unconventional and highly-polluting fossil fuels.

Ecological Internet has been working on the issue for years [more]. We are pleased to now join with WWF (so right on climate, so wrong on forests) in their recent call for an end to the production of tar sand and oil shale fuels [ark | more\ark]. These "carbon bomb" fuels can only perpetuate a deadly fossil fuel addiction, delaying transition to clean renewable energy, and ensuring Earth's climate is irreversibly damaged. They must be banned now before we become dependent.

Continue reading "Tar Sands and Oil Shale will Destroy the Climate to Save a Couple Bucks at the Pump" »

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Clayoquot Sound, Canada's Ancient Temperate Rainforest Valleys to Again Fall to Logging. These ancient forests must be fully protected and all industrial development ended to preserve biodiversity and ecosystem health, focusing upon employment from standing trees and fully intact ecosystems, and failure to do will lead to a renewed "War of the Woods" and global anti-B.C. markets campaign

TAKE ACTION! Canada's precious temperate rainforests [search] are again threatened with industrial logging. Clayoquot Sound [search], which lies along the West coast of British Columbia (B.C.), is a spectacular mosaic of lush coastal rainforests, fjord-like inlets and islands covering 850,000 acres. Such intact coastal temperate rainforests are globally rare, covering only about one-fifth of one percent of the Earth’s land area, half of which has already been destroyed. They are amongst the most biologically productive temperate ecosystems in the world. Clayoquot Sound is the most magnificent expression of temperate rainforest in North America.

There is no such thing as ecologically sustainable industrial logging or other industrial activities in a fully intact ancient forest ecosystem. Ancient forest logging must end worldwide to solve climate change, protect all biodiversity and achieve global ecological sustainability. Encourage all involved in British Columbia's forest policy to commit themselves fully to developing methods for employment and community advancement based upon standing forests and fully intact ecosystems. Or else promise you support a return to the blockades and protests that halted logging in Clayoquot in 1993, as well as a massive overseas campaign targeting B.C.'s markets. Surely rich Canada can find a way to spare Clayoquot Sound's vital ecosystems.TAKE ACTION!

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Let the Kenyan government know destroying ecosystems for toxic sugar monocultures is unethical, and ask them to please follow their own environmental laws, and permanently cancel the project

TAKE ACTION! Kenya has recently approved plans to destroy some 20,000 hectares of the globally important and ecologically sensitive Tana Delta for sugar and biofuel production [search]. Covering 130,000 hectares, these wetlands' diverse riverine vegetation -- forests, swamps, dunes, beaches and ocean -- will be forever altered by widespread vast fields of toxic, monoculture sugar cane and biofuel mill. The project threatens 350 species including birds, lions, hippos, nesting turtles, elephants, sharks, reptiles and the Tana red colobus, one of 25 primates facing extinction globally. Biofuel production worldwide continues to destroy crucial natural ecosystems [search] required for local and global sustainability. While hailed as a climate change remedy, this destruction of natural habitats for biofuel production almost always releases more carbon than saved. Using food such as sugar for fuel has raised food prices, leading to riots globally, including in Kenya. Please respectfully request the project be permanently cancelled. TAKE ACTION!

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Continued industrial forestry [search] in combination with surging greenhouse gas emissions [search] are forming a vicious cycle, whose climate/ecosystem positive feedbacks [search] are destroying more forests while releasing carbon. We know deforestation changes climate [ark | search], yet modern forest management techniques treat forests like tree plantations, and have decimated forest structure and dynamics making them more fire prone. Overlaid upon this has been climate change caused drought and heat which makes damaged canopies all the more prone to cataclysmic crown fires.

California has been hit by 2,000 fires this year [ark] and things will get worse. We simply must allow much more forest landscapes there and globally to regenerate old-growth features and prohibit industrial forestry there and in remaining primary forests, while dramatically reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Failure will herald in massive lightening storms causing hellish wildfires [ark] bearing down upon ourselves and our families.

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The extent to which wetlands are responsible for climate change [ark | more\ark] is becoming dreadfully clear. A recent international conference reveals wetlands [search] contain 771 billion tons of greenhouse gases, one-fifth of all the carbon on Earth, equal to the amount of carbon now in the atmosphere. And now we learn that should wetlands continue to be casually destroyed, it may well release a "carbon bomb" that dramatically amplifies climate change and general ecological collapse.

Wetlands are required for a livable Earth. They account for 6 percent of Earth's land surface, yet produce 25 percent of the world's food, purify water, recharge aquifers and act as buffers against violent coastal storms. About 60 percent of the Earth's wetlands have been destroyed in the past century, mostly through drainage for agriculture. This self-destructive behavior, destroying what seems to be "wastelands", is bereft of ecological understanding, and is one of the most dangerous of many activities dismantling the physical ecological systems upon which life depends.

Continue reading "Wetlands a Potential Carbon Bomb" »

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A first of its kind global assessment has found one third of reef-building corals face extinction because of climate change [ark | more\ark]. Climate change brings rising water temperatures and more intense solar radiation, which leads to coral bleaching and disease, often exacerbated by nutrient rich water run-off from denuded lands. Together the result is often mass coral mortality. Add this to acidic oceans [search], ocean dead zones [search] and widespread over-fishing [search] and it is clear we are witnessing the climate-mediated collapse of ocean ecosystems [search].

Death of coral reefs from climate change is not theory or conjecture of what might happen if we continue relentlessly emitting greenhouse gases. This is but the most recent evidence that climate change continues to unravel the biological foundation of existence, acting in conjunction with and magnifying forces such as habitat destruction, water diminishment and ocean decline. This biological homogenization [search] is happening now, in front of our eyes, and the processes and ramifications are known and understood by ecological science. Let us be clear: ecosystems which provide our sustenance are dying because of what we do. What level of destruction will it take to awaken the global consciousness?

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The wild and free Xingu River is critical to maintaining intact the Amazon, its peoples and the Earth we share

TAKE ACTION! The Brazilian government is planning to build what would be the world´s third largest dam on the Xingu River in the Brazilian Amazon [search]. The Xingu River in northeast Brazil is a tributary of the Amazon River. The Belo Monte Dam, meant principally to fuel the expansion of aluminum foundries and other industrial plants in the Amazon, would require diverting nearly the entire flow of the Xingu, drying up the “Big Bend” of the Xingu and its tributary, the Bacajá, home to hundreds of indigenous people. Native people upstream would also be affected by the dam´s impacts on fish stocks, their principal food source.TAKE ACTION!

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